Dashboards, Reporting & Business Intelligence

While the need for business intelligence is widely recognized, the use and implementation thereof can often be confusing, or misunderstood.

Most business intelligence initiatives start with the purpose of delivering the right information at the right time. This gives the correct priority to timeliness and accuracy of information, but does not indicate where said information should go. Though a real time BI software solution may deliver up to date information via dashboards or traditional reports, it may not be enough for employees who barely have time to log into their laptops when off visiting major customers. For such people, this information is not “real time” in the truest sense unless it is also readily accessible at the right place.

Another myth about business intelligence is that it provides analytical reporting while core transactional applications supply operational information. In actuality, a standard business intelligence software solution must meet both informational needs equally. Because information from both of these areas satisfies a diverse set of requirements, the most important ingredient for successful business intelligence implementation is getting the various parts of the organization properly aligned. It is critical that business analysts, in the early stages of implementation, interview all key stakeholders and document and reconcile critical business requirements from operational experts, analytical experts, line management, and staff management at multiple levels of the organization. Failure to understand internal customer requirements is one of the top reasons for failed business intelligence implementations.

Once requirements have been elicited and rationalized with each other, the proposed solution must be vetted with all stakeholders to ensure correctness and, even more importantly, drive buy-in so that all stakeholders will support and work towards a successful implementation rather than ignoring or, worse, actively resisting it. Once the initial requirements phase is complete, the next important step in an implementation is architecting a proposed solution and then piloting the solution on a small scale with key users to reduce any risks and prove out the implementation. During this phase, training plans can be created. A strategy for rolling out the implementation incrementally can be initiated and kinks in the implementation can be worked out.

Post-implementation, it is advisable to follow up with users to reinforce training and ensure that the full benefits of the business intelligence software solution are being realized. Any deferred features or capabilities can be addressed in the form of a small post-implementation revision project which takes an evolutionary approach towards continually improving the solution

To understand the benefits of self-service business intelligence, you first need to know what self-service BI is. It is, as it sounds, a way for business users to easily access the data that they need and create the necessary reports by themselves without having to involve the IT personnel or power users at their company. In essence, it is user-friendly business intelligence that any business user can operate.

Who Can Use Self-Service BI?

The whole point of self-service business intelligence is that anyone who needs to use it can use it. While BI tools are normally used by management or the key decision-makers in a company, it is now also being used by project managers to improve day-to-day performance and by real-time users in an operational capacity. Self-service BI doesn’t cut out the need for your IT personnel: they are still very necessary in creating applications and dealing with the more complicated business intelligence issues. But self-service BI does offer the benefit of streamlining the reporting process and allowing business users to handle much of it themselves.

Taking Advantage of the Benefits

Because self-service BI users don’t have to rely on your IT team to gain access to data and create reports, the decision-making process in your company can become that much faster. When a business user sees a problem that requires data to analyze the problem and strategize for a solution, that business user no longer has to first approach the IT department to access the data and build the necessary report. Removing that step in the process brings your business user to a solution much faster and improves the performance of your company on a much more immediate basis. Another benefit of self-service business intelligence: it frees up your IT personnel to work once again on the larger picture, rather than getting bogged down in the reporting needs of business users.

The Tools You Need for Self-Service Business Intelligence

How can you get your hands on self-service BI tools? Find a vendor that utilizes rich internet applications in its BI software. This allows for a user-friendly interface, web-based tools and reports, and reporting formats that will look and feel familiar to the user.

Business intelligence can be complex, but more and more, vendors are creating tools that are more user-friendly and allow business users to work directly with those tools. Take a look at self-service BI and streamline the decision-making process in your company.

Data problems can severely affect the quality of your business intelligence analysis, but they are often hard to detect. Because they don’t stop your analysis process right away, they can slowly become more and more of a detriment until they finally destroy your BI project. Because of how destructive unreliable data can be, one of the most important things you can do to ensure that your business intelligence software runs correctly is to make sure that your data is easily accessible and accurate. If you have duplicate or incomplete information, you will end up with results and eventually initiatives that are baseless. If you use the information to reach out to your customers for marketing campaigns or up-selling opportunities, you run the risk of looking disorganized and incompetent.

You can fix your data problems by following these basic steps:

• Detect and correct potential issues before they do any damage. Before adding any raw data to your business intelligence software applications, use reconnaissance software tools to determine the quality and reliability of your new data. This software is usually more accurate than checking the data manually and can detect and correct mistakes before they get lost in your existing data.
• Eliminate duplicates and standardize all your data as it comes in. This will give you a more comprehensive view of what kind of data you are actually collecting from the get go. By establishing procedures for data processing as it comes in, you can standardize the data as it enters the system.
• Make sure that any new data that applies to and affects old data can be categorized with the older data to create a more complete information history on a specific topic, be it customer buying habits or updating ROI.
• Set up a data “dictionary” so that data from separate sources with different phrases that share the same meaning are identified as belonging to the same category. For example, “manager” and “mgr” are spelled differently, but share the same meaning and should be treated as such.
• Use the tools available to you to automatically extract data from different sources, interpret it, and transform it into a form that can be used by your business intelligence software. This will save you the time and money required to translate your data manually.

Once you know your data is in the right format and contains information that can be used successfully by your software, you can concentrate on the results of your business intelligence analysis and how they affect your company. Take a second look at how reliable your data is now, before the wrong information affects your investment in your BI program.